1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and device for moving and positioning a center core for a magnetic disk which is disposed in the central portion of a magnetic disk sheet to be rotatable stored in a magnetic disk cartridge, when the magnetic disk cartridge is manufactured.
2. Related Art
Conventionally, a magnetic disk cartridge is used in various fields as a magnet recording medium. The magnetic disk cartridge, as known well, includes upper and lower half shells and a magnetic disk sheet such that the magnetic disk sheet is rotatably stored in a hollow space formed by the upper and lower half shells. And, in the center portion of the magnetic disk sheet, there is disposed a metal center core which includes a central hole and an engaging hole formed adjacent to the central hole and also includes in the outer peripheral portion thereof a flange portion for bonding the disk sheet thereto. When the magnetic disk cartridge is loaded into a recording and reproducing device, the center core is properly engageable with rotational drive means provided in the device to thereby be able to rotate the disk sheet at high speeds. Therefore, in a process of manufacturing a magnetic disk cartridge, there is included a step of bonding the above-mentioned center core and magnetic disk sheet to each other, and the bonding step is generally automated.
And, conventionally, when bonding the magnetic disk sheet to the center core, the center cores successively delivered from a part supply device are previously arranged in line on a delivery passage and are then taken out one by one from the lead one of the center cores, and then there is performed an operation to move and position only the subject center core, which operation is carried out to prepare the next step of bonding the magnetic disk sheet to the center core. There is conventionally employed such a method as shown in FIG. 5.
According to the method shown in FIG. 5, a plurality of center cores 2 each having a central hole 13 and an engaging hole 13a are arranged in line on a delivery passage 40 provided in a part supply device, and the center cores 2 excluding the lead center core to be pushed out by a pusher 44 and the next center core are stopped by a stopper pin 42 which is disposed on the delivery passage such that it can be projected as occasion arises. And, only one of the center cores is stopped from moving on and along the delivery passage 40 by a member, for example, a barrier 43 disposed on the far side of the delivery passage 40. At a given position in such stop area, there is disposed the above-mentioned pusher 44 which is used to move the subject center core in a direction intersecting horizontally (almost at an angle of 90.degree.) relative to the delivery direction of the delivery passage 40. The pusher 44 can be moved in an intersecting direction (a direction of an arrow H shown in FIG. 5) with respect to the delivery passage 40 by drive means such as a cylinder device or the like, and the center core 2 can be fed out to the side of a moving and positioning base member 45 by means of the operation of the pusher 44.
The moving and positioning base member 45 includes in the leading portion (on the far side) thereof a positioning stopper 46 which is formed in a V-like shape and is used to receive and position the center core 2 fed out by the pusher 44. That is, according to the conventional method and device, after the center core 2 is fed out by the pusher 44, the center core 2 is moved while the outer peripheral edges of the flange portion 12 of the center core 2 are abutted against the V-shaped portion of the positioning stopper 46 and thus the position thereof is restricted in this manner. And, when the center core 2 is moved to the position of the positioning stopper 46, then the center core 2 is attracted from above by an attracting device provided in a robot arm (which is provided separately but is not shown) and is then delivered to a given position in which a magnetic disk sheet is bonded to the center core.
In the above-mentioned conventional moving method and device, to position the center core on the moving and positioning base member, the outer peripheral edges of the flange portion of the center core are abutted against the positioning stopper. However, the shape of the center core is not limited to one shape but a plurality of shapes are actually employed, which provides a problem in the conventional method and device.
In other words, if the shapes of the center cores are different, then the outside diameters of the flange portions of the center cores are different from one another. This results in the fact that the central positions of the center cores are shifted. For this reason, when the center cores having different outside diameters are manufactured in the same production line, the mounting position of the positioning stopper must be changed in order to prevent shifting of the position of catching the center core by the attaching device or the like. Due to this, the positioning stopper must be replaced or must be adjusted in position according to the outside diameters of the flange portions, or the stroke of the pusher must be adjusted. This requires a considerable switching time, which results in lowered productivity.